There on the cave walls the lines curve around the rounded corners and cavities,
creating scenes of life thirty thousand years before today.
An ancient Picasso, armed only with the black stump of charcoal,
drew scenes of rhinos, bison, wolves, bears, horses and lions
and knew fully well
(where many artists spectacularly fail),
where each sinew strained,
every muscle bulged,
every nostril distended in the attitude of flight or repose,
even where woman becomes wolf
or bison becomes man.
Nothing else mattered, not even time
for by ancient reckoning, time never existed.
Yet here we are today, still thinking we matter more
than this anonymous Michaelangelo, who walked the earth those
thousands of years ago thinking, not of fame or fortune
but of what made him kin to the life that was all around him
and what made it all worth laying down
on the walls of the cave of Chauvet
that desperately long time ago
in sure-handed strokes of ash.
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